From Diana
Mitlin
IIED UK
Habitat? (in 15 minutes)
As an international conference it does not
leave me inspired.
If we have learnt nothing from the Earth Summit on it is that big
global conferences do little because the mechanisms are not there to
make the resolutions work on the ground. In fact, if I am being really
cynical some governments only sign up to these resolutions because
they know they cannot be implemented. The Bush decision to ignore
Kyoto shows how there are real political tensions between delivering
resources to those who are already rich and future generations. Those
tensions also exist between the rich and the poor with respect to
redistribution. When win win solutions can be found then there may be
little political opposition but many anti-poverty measures also
require redistribution and the political battle is a real one - there
are strong and powerful vested interests that want to protect their
present position.
That is not to say that international
conferences cannot have an important role. I think they can have an
important role in three respects but all of these require a lot of
work and I am not sure if it has been done or not, nor am I sure that
the timing is right to really reap the benefits.
Role one
There are a bundle of good and bad ideas
around. One of the strange things about development is that bad and
good ideas often coexist alongside each other. International
conferences provide an opportunity for the good ideas to rise above
the bad. We really know something now I think. We know real and valued
lessons about how to help the poor in a context of globalization and
decentralization - these ideas need to be spread. I think that
Istanbul plus five is right for this as many of these ideas have a
groundswell of support BUT to bring them to the point where the
conferences provides a point where they explode on the world requires
a slightly more coordinated attempt to influenced media speeches etc.
I may be wrong but I don't think this has happened.
Perhaps more seriously great ideas don't go
anywhere until the ground work has been done. The most conferences can
do is offer legitimacy. We still need lots of local groups demanding
an end to clientalistic practices of service distribution,
strategising about what they want and how to get it from the state,
learning how to use their own resources to better advantage and how to
build relationships to enable other resources to be put to better use.
In most cities this is simply not the case. Introducing the ideas at
the top will not help because the pressure on the ground is not there.
Nothing may happen or it may be counter productive as new ideas are
tried but fail because the long slog of local GRO strengthening has
not been done.
Role two
networking among those who need to be
networked is always useful and I am sure Istanbul plus five will do
this. Perhaps the critical link to make is bilateral (money) to the
urban poor (those who need it). As well as developing these links we
need to better understand how these links can work in practices.
The real point is that even when the networked contacts are there,
there are a bundle of institutional capacities that need to be put in
place for the these networks to deliver usable finance to the poor. We
need to make sure these capacities develop as the bilateral contacts
develop.
Role three
making people realise something is an issue.
I think Habitat II did this fairly
successfully - at least in the UK. Those working in urban poverty have
an identity both at the level of NGOs and development professionals.
Is another boost necessary? I am not sure.
So to answer the other question in the two
minutes I have left.
I think the challenge must be to develop on the ground capacity to
identify solutions to urban poverty and to build the relationships
needed to make those solutions implementable. Different kinds of
funding is required for both of these but the local capacity has to be
there to make this funding useful.
Diana
